Hermitage Museum

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For other uses, see Hermitage (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 59°56′26″N 30°18′49″E

The State Hermitage Museum

Hermitage logo.svg

Winter Palace Panorama 4.jpg

View of the Winter Palace building

Wikimedia | © OpenStreetMap

Established 1764

Location 34 Palace Embankment, Dvortsovy Municipal Okrug, Central District, Saint Petersburg,
Russia[2]

Collection size 3 million[1]

Visitors 968,604 (2020)[3]

Director Mikhail Piotrovsky

Public transit access Admiralteyskaya station

Website hermitagemuseum.org

The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Государственный Эрмитаж, tr. Gosudárstvennyj Ermitáž, IPA:
[ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ]) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest
art museum in the world by gallery space.[4] It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great
acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The
museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day.[5] It
has been open to the public since 1852. It attracted 968,604 visitors in 2020, a drop of eighty percent
from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, it ranked eleventh on the list of most visited art
museums in the world.[6]

Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the
numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them).[7] The collections occupy a large complex
of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of
Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at
Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The
museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July
1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.[8]

Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old
Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are open to the public. The entrance ticket for
foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free
of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The
museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace,
accessible from the Courtyard.

Contents

1 Etymology

2 Buildings

3 Collections

3.1 Egyptian antiquities

3.2 Classical antiquities

3.3 Prehistoric art

3.4 Jewelry and decorative art

3.5 Italian Renaissance

3.6 Italian and Spanish fine art

3.7 Knights' Hall

3.8 Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque

3.9 German, Swiss, British and French fine art

3.10 Russian art

3.11 French Neoclassical, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist art

3.12 Modern, German Romantic and other 19–20th century art

4 History

4.1 Origins: Catherine's collection

4.2 Expansion in the 19th century

4.3 After the October Revolution

5 Dependencies

5.1 Hermitage Amsterdam

5.2 Hermitage-Kazan Exhibition Center

5.3 Ermitage Italia, Ferrara

5.4 Hermitage-Vyborg Center

5.5 Hermitage Exhibition Center, Vladivostok

5.6 Hermitage-Siberia, Omsk

5.7 Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius

5.8 Former dependencies

6 Management

6.1 Hermitage directors

6.2 Volunteer service

6.3 Cats

7 In popular culture

7.1 Films

7.2 Television

7.3 Literature

7.4 Games

8 Gallery

9 See also

10 Notes

11 References

12 Further reading

13 External links

Etymology

A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French hermit, ermit
"hermit, recluse", from Late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, literally "people who live alone", which
is in turn derived from ἐρημός (erēmos), "desert". The building was initially given this name because of
its exclusivity - in its early days, only very few people were allowed to visit.[citation needed]
Buildings

Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage
Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from
the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large
Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main
residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building
on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.[9]

The Hermitage Museum complex. From left to right: Hermitage Theatre – Old Hermitage – Small
Hermitage – Winter Palace (the "New Hermitage" is situated behind the Old Hermitage).

Collections

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The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the
13th to the 20th centuries. It is displayed, in about 120 rooms, on the first and second floor of the four
main buildings. Drawings and prints are displayed in temporary exhibitions.

Egyptian antiquities

Main article: Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum

Egyptian Hall

Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection,
has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace. It serves as a
passage to the exhibition of Classical Antiquities. A modest collection of the culture of Ancient
Mesopotamia, including a number of Assyrian reliefs from Babylon, Dur-Sharrukin and Nimrud, is
located in the same part of the building.

Classical antiquities

The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage
buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in the
Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and
granite. One of the largest and most notable interiors of the first floor is the Hall of Twenty Columns,
divided into three parts by two rows of grey monolithic columns of Serdobol granite, intended for the
display of Graeco-Etruscan vases. Its floor is made of a modern marble mosaic imitating ancient
tradition, while the stucco walls and ceiling are covered in painting.

The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m (8.4 ft) high Kolyvan Vase,
weighing 19 t (42,000 lb), made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the
western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the
New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries. The floor of the
Athena Room in the south-eastern corner of the building, one of the original libraries, is decorated with
an authentic 4th-century mosaic excavated in an early Christian basilica in Chersonesos in 1854.

The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century
BC, ancient Greek pottery, items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies, Hellenistic
sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos, such as the famous Gonzaga Cameo,
Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from
the first century BC - fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures.
One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus, which, according to latest research, is an
original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it was thought before.[10] There are,
however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments.

Prehistoric art

On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artifacts and
the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric
artifacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of
the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Among them is a renowned collection of the art and
culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest
surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot, both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC.
The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artifacts from Armenia and Western Armenia.
Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under the supervision of Boris Piotrovsky, former director
of the Hermitage Museum.

Jewelry and decorative art

Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room
displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the
4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground
floor in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes, Caucasus
and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold. Visitors may only visit the treasure galleries as part
of a guided tour.

The Pavilion Hall

Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern
Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a
collection of mosaics. The floor of the hall is adorned with a 19th-century imitation of an ancient Roman
mosaic.

Two galleries spanning the west side of the Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion
house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and
the fine art of the Low Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Italian Renaissance

The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival
styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature
works of Italian Renaissance artists, including Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, as well as Benois Madonna
and Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his school.

The Small Italian Skylight Room

The Italian Renaissance galleries continues in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage with paintings,
sculpture, majolica and tapestry from Italy of the 15th–16th centuries, including Conestabile Madonna
and Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph by Raphael. The gallery known as the Raphael Loggias, designed
by Giacomo Quarenghi and painted by Cristopher Unterberger and his workshop in the 1780s as a
replication of the loggia in the Apostolic Palace in Rome frescoed by Raphael, runs along the eastern
facade.

Italian and Spanish fine art

The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum
complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian
lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of the 16th-18th centuries, including Veronese,
Giambattista Pittoni, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Murillo. In the enfilade of smaller rooms alongside the
skylight rooms the Italian and Spanish fine art of the 15th-17th centuries, including Michelangelo's
Crouching Boy and paintings by El Greco.

The museum also houses paintings by Luis Tristán, Francisco de Zurbarán, Alonso Cano, José de Ribera
and Goya.

Knights' Hall

The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek
revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from
the 15th-17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection. The Hall of Twelve Columns, in the
southeast corner of the New Hermitage, is adorned with columns of grey Serdobol granite and was also
designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, is now used for temporary exhibitions.

The Three Graces, 1813–1816, by Canova

The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms.
It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features
neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to
the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before the
October Revolution of 1917, but is now closed. The upper gallery of the staircase is adorned with twenty
grey Serdobol granite columns and feature 19th-century European sculpture and Russian lapidary works.

Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque

The Rubens Room

The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are
now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including
the large collections of Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt. They also contain several paintings by Jan
Brueghel the Elder (Velvet period), Frans Snyders (for example, The Fish Market), Gerard ter Borch,
Paulus Potter, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan van Goyen, Ferdinand Bol and Gerard van Honthorst.

German, Swiss, British and French fine art

The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of
German fine art of the 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings
by Poussin, Lorrain, Watteau.
The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied
and fine art from the 16th–19th century, including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, are on
display in nearby rooms facing the courtyard. This area also holds paintings by German artists, including
Hans Wertinger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Barthel Bruyn the Elder, Caspar David Friedrich (Moonrise by
the Sea), Anton Mengs, Hans Thoma, Anselm Feuerbach, Franz Stuck (Two Men Fighting Over a Woman)
and Heinrich Campendonk as well as paintings by Swiss painters Angelica Kauffman, Alexandre Calame,
Arnold Böcklin and Ferdinand Hodler.